On Fri, May 6, 2016 at 11:57 PM, Richard Gaskin <ambassa...@fourthworld.com> wrote: > > There are many open source licenses.
Yes, just like there are many political systems - all supposedly for the betterment 'of the people'. Even in democratic societies the variations are tremendous - and their success also. And just because a system succeeds doesn't mean it can't be made better. >From my own naive perspective such success depends very much on whether 'libre' is 'inclusive' or 'exclusive'. Where there are 'good guys' and 'bad guys' then IMO you are only handicapping your own success. I think the movie Invictus: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1057500/ is a brilliant demonstration of the advantage of eliminating the 'us' and 'them' attitude. You yourself have stated on this List that those in charge of GPL, if anyone ever finds a loophole which skirts the intended path that GPL has chosen to tread then the GPL will be amended to immediately exclude that loophole. As I linked previously, and indicated, I tend to agree with Linus Torvalds that as the GPL has progressed it has become apparent that it's an 'us' and 'them' kind of license. You offered the success of Linux as proof of the pudding as to how great GPL is but you failed to mention that the Linux Kernel is forever held to GPL v 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_kernel#GPL_version_3 and this wasn't just Torvalds, but the majority of key contributors realised that GPL v 3 was not the 'Mandela' approach to a world where both open and closed software had it's place and both could help each other achieve greatness they couldn't achieve on their own. You also failed to mention that Torvalds' Git (now a mainstay of LC) is also firmly GPL v 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Git_%28software%29 Nor did you indicate that the majority of GPL software is still GPL v 2 or that the percentage of OSS using GPL is on the decline: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_General_Public_License#Adoption IMO an indication that whilst the original GPL goal was 'libre', some started to realise that loophole closing was 'libre' only to those who were 'white good guys', and it was heading down a more 'us' and 'them' kind of mentality which was not the 'libre' for developers to choose $0, $$$, open, closed or mix and match kind of future that Torvalds et al envisaged would truly benefit everyone. The reason there are many variations on the 'libre' license, is because GPL v 3 clearly doesn't get everyone's vote as giving 'everyone' the freedom they are truly looking for in how they write AND distribute their code. It's an attempt to make a good system better. I agree with you, well Ludwig Mies van der Rohe - God is in the details; you need to read the details and then carefully decide which license truly gives YOU and EVERYONE ELSE the 'libre' to use and distribute code. Or to put it more bluntly, this attitude: "Richard Stallman and the FSF specifically encourage library-writers to license under the GPL so that proprietary programs cannot use the libraries, in an effort to protect the free-software world by giving it more tools than the proprietary world." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_General_Public_License#Linking_and_derived_works strikes me as blatant, upfront, software apartheid. _______________________________________________ use-livecode mailing list use-livecode@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-livecode
